Infection Control for COVID-19 Imaging

Discussion: A fear in pandemics is the overwhelming of hospital system capacity by the infected.  As a single confirmed COVID patient can take down a CT or MR suite for anywhere between 1 and 3 hours, depending on whether they are ventilated, this is a reasonable concern. The rate-limiting step in minimizing downtime and enhancing throughput will be air exchange. The following common-sense suggestions may be helpful: First and foremost, PCR is the test of choice for COVID diagnosis. ‘R/O COVID’ using CT is not encouraged. Second, a lot of information can be obtained by a portable chest x-ray. Portable chests need not worry about room gas exchange and can increase diagnostic confidence.  They can even be performed through glass! Third, for facilities that have multiple CT scanning suites, consider reserving one for confirmed positive COVID cases and another for non-COVID patients presenting for other reasons (trauma, RLQ pain, stroke). Institutions with multiple scanners can allocate dynamically to COVID positive vs. negative patients based upon daily census and incidence. Fourth, increasing throughput in the scanners dedicated to COVID patients is challenging particularly when ventilated patients are scanned. Scanning ventilated COVID patients in the same scanner back-to-back may not increase risk to patients, but instead expose HCP’s to sustained droplet aerosols with high viral titers, increasing the risk of HCP infection. Fitted full-face res...
Source: The Health Care Blog - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: COVID-19 Hospitals Medical Practice Physicians coronavirus CT scans Imaging infecton control Pandemic Radiology Stephen Borstelmann Source Type: blogs